


coming up reckless (desperate and all alone)

by renecdote



Category: The Umbrella Academy (TV)
Genre: Alcohol, Angst, Drug Use, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Gen, Grief, Suicide Attempt, That One Crypt Scene, Trauma, canon character death, lots of Brotherly Love
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-22
Updated: 2019-02-22
Packaged: 2019-11-03 19:12:06
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,728
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17883635
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/renecdote/pseuds/renecdote
Summary: Klaus doesn’t want to think about how much more fucked up he would be without Benny around to save him from himself.Not even death can stand in the way of brotherhood. Not for Six and Four at least.





	coming up reckless (desperate and all alone)

**Author's Note:**

> I was wondering why Klaus could see Ben all the time if he could only conjure others when he was sober and I started thinking that maybe it was less about Klaus and more to do with Ben's determination. And then I made it angsty. 
> 
> This has a tiny sprinkling of comic canon in it but it's literally just that Klaus's codename was Séance so that's all you need to know if you haven't read the comics.
> 
> Title credit to As Lions 'Deathless'

**** The statue is too big and too cold and too—too much. A grand gesture wrapped in empty intentions. Kings get statues like this. Queens, generals, beloved national icons. Not kids too fucking young to die. 

Klaus hates that godawful fucking statue.

He comes out and sits in front of it every day anyway. 

“Good morning, Benny,” he says, sipping coffee with too much whiskey in it. He hasn’t been to bed yet, isn’t planning on going to bed any time soon. He’s riding the tail end of a high and determined to keep it going for as long as possible.

Klaus knows all too well that the longer the high lasts, the harder the crash is going to hit, but he doesn’t care. He doesn’t _want_ to care—about anything. Anyone. Caring is what got him this fucking messed up in the first place. Caring _hurts_. It’s easier—better—to just smoke another joint, inject another needle, open another bottle.

“I thought I saw you last night,” Klaus says. He doesn’t—this isn’t what he came out to talk about. Not that he ever comes to talk about anything in particular. Even when he doesn’t feel like talking at all though, he finds his mouth falling open, jaw loose, tongue moving with its own agenda. Benny was always too damn easy to talk to, that’s all. Easy to listen to, as well, but now Benny is six fucking feet underground and Klaus has to fill the silence himself.

It’s silence or ghosts.

Klaus hates the fucking ghosts. 

“There was a—a club. And a guy or, um, no, a girl. She had—” He twirls a finger near the back of his head when the word for pigtails escapes him. “Done up with neon bands, you know what I mean? Sparkles too, lots of ‘em.”

Some of them are probably still in Klaus’s hair, caught between the folds of his clothing, ground into his skin. They hadn’t—he wasn’t looking for sex, thinks he might have even pushed her back when her wandering hands became propositioning. He just wanted to forget, to lose himself in the techno beat and the crush of a hundred sweaty, breathing bodies grinding together. So close that a little shared glitter was inevitable. 

“There were so many people,” Klaus sighs. He lies down, doesn’t care that the courtyard stones are damp and muddy from last night’s rain. The sky above is clear blue now, hot sun burning away the moisture and leaving behind the stink of wet cement. 

“Thought I saw you when—when I left.” Stumbled outside and puked in the alley before the bouncer kicked him further along the curb. “But it musta been… There were so many people.”

It's just that none of them were the one he wanted to see.

 

 

————————

 

 

The air is stale and tastes like death. Dirt and rot and something bitter that is probably the bile at the back of Klaus’s throat. He is pressed as far into the corner as he can go, eyes squeezed shut, hands clamped over his ears. He has already sobbed and screamed himself hoarse and now he has only whimpers.

It is dark and he is not alone.

And then there is light and— _oh thank god thank god thank god_ —he is no longer alone.

Ben steps down into the crypt, something fiercely protective in the gaze that sweeps around the stone. He stops in front of Klaus, crouches down and gently pulls his hands away from his face.

“Can you walk?” he asks.

To get out of that hellish crypt, Klaus could have run. But he lets Benny help him to his feet, leans a little too heavily on his brother as they stumble into the sunlight. They fall and land in a heap on dead grass and crunching leaves.

“Fuck,” Klaus says and it sounds like he’s been gargling nails. “I need a fucking drink.”

Ben doesn’t say that thirteen is too young to drink, even though he must be thinking it. Ben is good like that—he’s only bitchy and judgemental when Klaus is being monumentally stupid, instead of just ordinarily stupid. 

What he says is, “I know a place.”

And an hour later, Klaus is calming the shaking in his limbs and the screaming in his mind with the finest bottle of single malt Scotch that Reginald Hargreeve’s liquor cabinet had to offer. He decides in that moment that he hates Scotch—and then he takes another swig and passes the bottle to Ben because there are things he hates more. Things like dark crypts and dear old dad and fucking _ghosts_. 

The burn of the alcohol feels good—almost as good as the haziness that follows, the fuzzy blanket over his thoughts, the disconnect between his mind and his body that should be terrifying but just feels nice. 

Klaus knows what real terror feels like.

Maybe if he drinks a bit more, though, he’ll forget that too.

At some point the bottle disappears and Klaus is falling into bed instead. He’s laughing and then all of a sudden he’s crying so hard it hurts. His chest is caving in and the room is spinning and, god, he’s such a fucking mess, why does anyone put up with him?

Benny hugs him until the tears stop and then he pulls off Klaus’s boots and pulls the covers up to his chin.

“Thank you, Benny,” Klaus whispers. There are still tears drying on his cheeks and he doesn’t want Ben to turn out the lights, doesn’t want his brother to leave him alone in the darkness even if he’s only going as far as the room next door. 

Ben sits on the edge of the bed. “Anytime,” he says. “That’s what brothers are for, right?”

For some stupid, sentimental reason that makes Klaus want to cry again.

Ben straightens covers that don’t need to be straightened and Klaus grabs his arm, holding tightly even as his eyes struggle to focus on his brother’s face. “Stay,” he pleads—too drunk and emotionally drained to feel any shame in it. “You can—the monsters—”

“Okay,” Ben says. “It’s okay, Klaus. I’m here, okay? I can keep the monsters away.”

Klaus doesn’t know what he did to deserve a brother like Benny. 

He had wished in that crypt that Reginald fucking Hargreeves had never adopted him. But then he wouldn’t know his favourite brother—his best friend. And Benny would be all alone here. He wouldn’t have anyone who understood what it was liked having such horrible, painful, torturous fucking abilities. Klaus wouldn’t have anyone who understood what it was like to be so terrified of this thing that was part of him.

“It’s okay,” Benny says again. He lies down on top of the covers, runs a hand through Klaus’s hair. “You’re safe now.”

Klaus doesn’t want to think about how much more fucked up he would be without Benny around to save him from himself, so he closes his eyes and lets himself fall asleep instead.

 

 

————————

 

 

April twenty-third is an unremarkable day. Klaus doesn’t select it out of the other three hundred and sixty-five there are to choose from. If he’s being honest, he doesn’t even know that is what the date is. It’s a Monday, but it could be a Saturday or a Wednesday for all Klaus knows. 

He’s drunk. (No surprise there.)

Coming down from a high. (Also no surprise.) 

And it’s as good a day as any—by which he means it’s a really, truly, fucking awful day and Klaus is just. Done. He’s done. He can’t handle the screaming, the nightmares, the _daymares_ —any of it. All of it. It’s too much.

Ben has been dead for a month and a handful of days that feel like years. The time since then has blended together in a swirling mass of _no no no god no_ and all the other shit Klaus has been dealing with since he was a kid. A baby, really. He’s been dealing with all this shit for as long as he’s breathed oxygen out of the womb. Eighteen fucking years and half a dozen months. 

Klaus looks at the needle in hands and he knows—knows and doesn’t care—that it’s too much. If he injects every last drop into the vein bulging beneath his shoelace tourniquet, he will die. Klaus considers himself somewhat of an expert—reluctant, screaming and kicking the whole way, as it may be, but an expert nonetheless—on death and its aftereffects. These days, he’s a bit of an expert on drugs too. So he knows. He knows and he does not care.

“Don’t.”

The voice itches at Klaus’s mind as he stretches out his arm, willing his hand to stop shaking long enough to get the needle against the vein. He ignores it. He hears a lot of voices, a lot of them pleading, begging, screaming. Soon—soon it will be quiet though.

“Séance. Don’t.”

Klaus’s hand twitches and the needle skitters across his skin, a thin line of red welling up in its wake. “Fuck,” Klaus hisses, a frustrated response more than a pained one. And then he looks up. “Oh fuck. You—you—you _jackass_.”

Ben laughs but it’s a wet and strangled sound to match the tears snaking down his cheeks. “You’re the jackass,” he says thickly. “Can’t believe I still have to stop your stupid ass from doing dumb shit even when I’m dead.”

Klaus chokes on a sob he doesn’t mean to let out. “Shouldn’t have fucking died then.”

The needle is still there, somewhere on the floor even though Klaus doesn’t remember dropping it. He’s still drunk, still coming down from one high and already looking to the next. Everything still fucking sucks.

But Ben.

His little brother Benny who hasn’t been all that little in a long, long time. Klaus can’t remember when Ben hit the same height as him, when he grew out of being tiny, quiet Number Six, but now all he can think about is how he’s going to grow bigger and older and Benny is never going to change. So it doesn’t matter that Benny hasn’t been little in a long, long time because now he’s always going to be _younger_.

His brother says, “Please don’t do this, Klaus.”

And Klaus doesn’t.


End file.
